Force modulation: A behavioural marker of mind-wandering

It is known that the Metronome Response Task (MRT)-one of the most used mind-wandering sampling paradigms, struggles to differentiate between spontaneous mind-wandering (wherein one's attention is uncontrollably shifted away from the task at hand) and deliberate mind-wandering (wherein one's attention is purposefully shifted away). Thus, we endeavoured to design and test a new mind-wandering measure, called the In Sync Task (IST), that can achieve such differentiation more readily. Unlike the MRT, which involves having participants click in sync (using a mouse) with rhythmically presented, auditory monotones, the IST requires participants to (1) click in sync with tone triplets that increase incrementally in loudness and (2) modulate their clicking force to the presented tone's loudness. Here, we measured (1) participants' variabilities in their rhythmic response times (as is the MRT) and (2) their consistency in appropriately modulating their clicking force. Across two separate samples of university students (n = 119 and n = 121) collected between June 2022 to February 2023, we showed performance differences between the mind-wandering subtypes. Specifically, participants were better able to modulate their clicking force during epochs of spontaneous, compared with deliberate, mind-wandering, whereas the MRT was unable to differentiate between these conditions. In sum, we show that there appear to be greater costs to performance when one deliberately mind-wanders, as opposed to spontaneously mind-wandering.